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Everyone knows that Henry VIII was married six times, right? Divorced, beheaded, died – Divorced, beheaded, survived – that’s the rhyme to remember them by. But in all the fuss about Catharine, Anne, Jane, Anne, Katherine and Catherine, we’ve forgotten the ‘lucky’ ones that got away. Catharine of Aragon was, of course, married to Henry’s…

Kensington Palace would have certainly held a special place in Queen Victoria’s heart; it was here she spent her childhood, learnt she was Queen, and first set eyes on the love of her life, Prince Albert. As a declared royalist, this exhibition was pumped full with the kind of stuff that makes my heart go…

Sarah Merriman, a Visitor Experience Manager for the National Trust (Wimpole Estate), has been kind enough to share some tips with Historical Honey on how to approach forging a career within the National Trust, or indeed the wider Heritage Sector. Wimpole Estate, National Trust More About Sarah: Sarah has recruited around 200 staff and volunteers…

I think most people are guilty of a fashion blunder – as a child I loved nothing more than to parade around in my silver Puffa Jacket which made me look like a space-age Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. From bell-bottoms to shell-suits, and our returning obsession for dungarees, Fashion Faux Pas will always come back to haunt us, eventually…read…

As a kid growing up in Lancashire, my parents used to take my sister and I on little road trips over yonder ‘ill (that’s ‘over the next hill’ in plain English). We’d usually go to Blackpool or Formby, and if we were really lucky, Beatrix Potter’s favourite place, the Lake District. One place that sticks…

I have realized that local history scholarship is often met with a dismissive sort of condescension by some historians. If you are self-identified as a scholar of local history you are often received within the academy as professionally akin to a ‘backyard archaeologist” i.e. someone who digs in his own garden in search of relics…

When we think back on the great figures in history, we remember the struggles they fought; their courage, leadership and great innovative minds… so WHY did so many balls it up and meet their end in a way totally unbefitting to how they lived in life? Here are some of my favourites: Who: Attila the…

Fancy Becoming An Expert in Stone Age Archaeology in 5 Minutes? Yes? Then read on… First things first, because our Stone Age ancestors didn’t actually write anything down, the whole period is conjecture. Finding some flint axes in a cave could mean anything; the cave could have been a religious site or a home, or…

BY JEFF GUINN If you’d asked me before I’d picked up this book just what Bonnie and Clyde’s story was, I would have said ‘Weren’t they just two outlaws looking for trouble?’ Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong. Granted they were both trouble makers, and yes they didn’t stay on the right side…

On May 7th 1747, Johanna Magdalena Catharina Judith Van Dorth was baptized in the small church of a village named Warnsveld, in the east of the Netherlands. She died in 1799 after a most remarkable life, after literally being shot in the coffin that became her final resting place. There is not much certainty about Johanna’s…